Baldur's Gate Review

Summary

Rating:

Overall:All in all, I find Baldur's Gate to be a great game, rich with amazing detail. I have played over 200 hours on a single game, and I am still looking forward to some more Baldur's Gate sessions.

If you remember playing Dungeons & Dragons fondly (and who
doesn't!), and have always wished for a good version on your own
computer, your wish has been granted. You may have tried some
D&D based computer games before, and come away dissatisfied.
Baldur's Gate is worth another look, as it is a very faithful
recreation of an extended D&D campaign, with your computer
serving as the Dungeon Master, all of the Non-Player Characters, and
all of your quest-mates. For those of you heathens who have not
played D&D, you don't have to worry! Baldur's Gate has removed
the need to learn books full of arcane rules. You no longer need to
own a small bag of weird dice, or keep character charts, or detailed
maps.

Your first task in Baldur's Gate is to roll up a character.
The program walks you through a long series of steps on the way to
creating your in game persona. First you pick your gender, and
unfortunately only a few limited choices are available here. You get
to choose an appearance as well, but this is from a much larger list.
Next, you pick your race, which more properly should be called
species, I think. Choosing the class of the character you want is
next, whether you prefer fighter, thief, wizard, or one of many other
choices and sub choices. The computer will then generate a random
character for you, with some strength, intelligence, charisma,
dexterity, wisdom, and constitution. If you like the character, you
can save it, if not, just keep rolling. After you've finished
rolling, you are allowed to transfer some points from the
characteristics that you don't need to those that you do. As an
example, if you plan to be a fighter you can trade those useless
wisdom points for more strength! Finally, you can pick the alignment,
special skills, and name for your character. You are now ready to
begin.

As the curtain goes up, you start in the Prologue of the game,
which is really a full tutorial on how the game works. All the
characters you meet in the Town of Candlekeep are happy to instruct
you in various forms of combat or in how to take various other types
of action. You are given several little chores to do, and can gather
some basic equipment ready for your travels. Eventually you find the
way on to the start of the real game, and the beginning of Chapter
One. Beautiful cut scenes mark the transition from chapter to
chapter, and at some other key points in the game.

The rest of the game revolves around uncovering a hidden plot, and
doing hundreds of little quests here and there. As you move along
through the game, your character will advance in power and acquire
better equipment. If you play well, you will be joined by up to five
other characters. Together, you can become an impressive group, with
the different strengths of each member adding up to more than just the
sum of the parts. As you succeed in various battles and quests, you
will all share in gathering experience, which will also make your
party grow in strength and ability. Baldur's Gate gives you a
lot of control over how each character advances, and in what that
character can specialize.

As the leader of your wandering group, you will learn that managing
your party can be tricky. The various characters in your group may
have very specific agendas that need to be followed, or they may
desert you or even turn on you. You must also pay close attention to
alignment; characters that have a strong evil alignment will
inevitably wind up hating any strong good aligned characters that you
have. Battles within your party, or losing members at a crucial time,
is not helpful to advancing in the game. You can read about the
histories of each of your characters, and maybe get a better insight
into how they will behave.

The most common way to get new party members is to bump into them
in your travels. After a chat, they may decide to offer to join your
group. You may choose to let them join, but if your group is made
larger than six by the addition, you will have to let somebody go. In
some cases, a pair of characters in your group is so strongly bound
that when you release one, the other character may choose to leave
your group as well. This is not too bad, as you can usually fill the
gap by finding another character soon. Or perhaps your discarded
party members will remain where you left them, and be willing to
rejoin your party at a later time. This level of realism in role play
is exceptional for an RPG.

As you travel, you will also meet characters who will not be
willing to join your party, but who often have a quest for you to
overcome, or some information for you, or a special object. There are
so many little quests in this game that you have to be careful not to
sign up for too many quests before you complete some of them, or you
may become swamped in unfinished business. The characters you meet
along the way do not have purely fixed interactions with your group.
A lot of what happens will depend on how you conduct your dialogue
with them, which really allows you to experience some true
role-playing in the game.

The fighting system used in Baldur's Gate is excellent. You
can let the characters Artificial Intelligence control all their
actions, and just work your character manually in real time if you
like. You can select from several AI scripts, or even write your own,
if you are truly dedicated. If you don't want to go with the AI's
decisions, you can go to a more D&D style of battle at any
time. By hitting the spacebar, you stop time so that you can declare
an intention for each of your characters. When time resumes, the
characters will all start to try to do what you have asked, but they
may not succeed, for example a wizard may not be able to cast a spell
because he was hit while reciting it. If you charm an enemy, you can
even assign an intention to him.

Internet play with Baldur's Gate is very similar to the
single player version. I haven't done much online myself, but others
report that the game is easy to play on the net. The CDs contain a
version of GameSpy, a universal server browser that started by
supporting Quake servers. GameSpy will help you to download lists of
free servers and then let you enter a game by double clicking on one
of the server names. You also get the HEAT network client, another way
to find a free game. Games are saved on the server, and you can
switch characters back and forth from single player games to online
games.

As the party is traveling, you can control the marching order in
many pre-defined formations. Two abreast works well in tunnels, a
circular pack works better in open areas, and follow-the-leader works
well through narrow openings. All the characters know their own place
in the formation, and will try their best to get there. Just as with
D&D games, any long trip may have a random encounter with some
collection of bad guys. Make sure to keep your troops rested and
healthy before going on a long journey.

Most of the game is done in a third person view, like many other
RPG's that are around. But, unlike most other RPG's, the backgrounds
are completely drawn by hand, so there is no tiling of backgrounds
that can lead to repetitive scenery. The sound effects in Baldur's
Gate were also terrific, from the individual "oof" and "yoicks"
that the characters make when they were being hurt, to the sounds of
the sea-side and the weather. With only two speakers, I didn't have
support for Creative Environmental Audio, but the effect was still
great.

The chore of mapping is taken over by the computer as well.
Baldur's Gate is divided up into many towns and areas, and each
section has a beautiful map. Of course, this being a relative of
D&D, there are some tunnels to crawl around in as well, mine
tunnels, passages in ancient crypts, and even some large and damp
sewer pipes.

The monsters of Baldur's Gate are many and varied. There
are blobs of jelly, giant spiders, ghouls and zombies, kobolds,
carrion crawlers, and plain old human bandits. Most monster types
come in varying strengths, which it seems as though the game selects
to match your party strength, at least to some extent. The NPCs may
also be out to get you to, either for a bounty or for some other
purpose. Bring lots of healing potions with you!

As the requirements indicate, you are going to need a fairly
powerful computer to run Baldur's Gate to it's best advantage.
I ran it on a Pentium II at 233MHz with 128MB RAM, 2GB disk, 40x
CD-ROM, 4MB SVGA, with Win98 with DirectX 5.0, and it was still
somewhat sluggish with all the effects turned on. A good tip is turn
off the weather effects if you are not happy with the game's response.
After a little while, you get tired of seeing the rain come down
anyway, and none of the plants seem to mind the unusually long
drought. You will see a dramatic speed improvement.

Most modern games are large enough to require multiple CD-ROMs, and
Baldur's Gate is no exception. The game comes on five
CD-ROM's, which means that there will be some switching of disks. The
game is laid out to minimize the swapping, but it is still a bother to
have to swap disks in the middle of a long trek. If you are lucky
enough to have a DVD drive, be sure to get the DVD version, which
eliminates that problem altogether. If you finish the five CD's, an
expansion pack, Tales of the Sword Coast, is now available.